Happy to oblige, but 'Umpire' doesn't seem able to respond without making personal comments and insults in all his responses to any post I make here. He seems to want to silence me, but I won't be bullied.

Perhaps this forum needs an 'ignore' function - I would happily use it to stop seeing his posts.

I think that Mr Umpire has forgotten that we already have a T20 tournament. Simply split it into two leagues of nine teams each. Relegation/promotion. Live cricket on terrestrial tv. Allow a few more overseas players per team. Franchise T20 will destroy the game as we know it.

Will be interesting to see if the crowds continue to increase for this years blasts. It could help if people turned up and showed they wanted to support their county rather than a franchise they have no affiliation with. Although I guess that the new tournament is so far down the line that nothing will stop it now!

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Tv apparently wants an English BBL so it will happen irrespective of everything else, not least alienating smaller counties and vast swathes of regions over something like a name. Like the birth of rl superleague...or how it was meant to be. You can't buy the sunshine though!

I'd be interested as to whether the counties could/would be willing to pay for one to be honest - looking around sports stadiums in general in the UK, the only one I can think of to hand is the Millenium Stadium. There must be a reason even the big football clubs haven't invested them (I know football's a winter sport but a roof must give them more options in terms of keeping the pitch in good nick).

A retractable roof would be a massive structure on a Cricket ground, the playing area of a Test Ground is probably 3 or 4 times that of a football pitch. T20 could be played in Football stadiums as was mooted many years ago in the John Player League days as short boundaries and close crowds would probably be an asset.